VuFind is a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is to enable your users to search and browse through all of your library’s resources by replacing the traditional OPAC.

Overview

VuFind is completely modular so you can implement just the basic system, or all of the components. And since it’s open source, you can modify the modules to best fit your need or you can add new modules to extend your resource offerings.

Evergreen supports all core modules; acquisitions, circulation, cataloguing, serials and reports, as well as providing an excellent OPAC capable of searching across a consortium or individual libraries.

Software as a service

Service as a service

Our preferred solution is that PTFS Europe host the VuFind system for you. As well as providing a greener computing solution this saves you the management and cost overhead of having to maintain a server. In turn PTFS Europe find it far easier and more cost effective to support a server in a hosted environment where we have total control of the underlying system. This saving we can pass on to you in the form of lower maintenance charges.

The service is hosted at our high quality data centres based in Manchester.

Features

Features

Search with Faceted Results. The search system allows for the user to search from a basic search box and then to be able to narrow down the results by clicking on the various facets of the results.

Live Record Status and Location with Ajax QueryingThe search results page is able to display the live status of a record through the use of AJAX by querying the catalog at that exact moment. And since it is done through AJAX after the results have loaded, the page will not slow down for any reason.

“More Like This” Resource SuggestionsWhen viewing a record, the user will be offered suggestions of resources that are similar to the current resource.

Browse for Resources The user has the ability to browse the catalog allowing them to explore what the library has rather than only being able to see a very narrow spectrum of results.

Author Biographies The user can learn more about the author with contextual information and see all of the books that they have written in the library.

Persistent URLs Allows the user to bookmark their queries or records to allow permanent access to a page they were once on.

Zotero Compatible Your users can save and tag any records with Zotero or any other COinS based application so they can store their records in one place.

VuFind runs on Solr Energy. Apache Solr, an open source search engine, offers amazing performance and scalability to allow for VuFind to respond to search queries in milliseconds time. It has the ability to be distributed if you need to spread the load of the catalogue over many servers or in a server farm environment.

API

API

Access Your Data: Open Search, OAI, Solr. VuFind has many APIs to interact with the search, data and many other features. You can syndicate your record data with other institutions via an OAI server. You can search using vufind’s algorithms via OpenSearch. And if you want complete access to your indexed data, you can interact with Solr, VuFind’s backend search and index engine.

PTFS Europe customers

PTFS Europe customers

PTFS Europe’s VuFind customer base has grown dramatically as libraries look for an interface to replace their traditional library OPAC.